An Apple for the Creature

The answer was very simple. No matter how many times she closed her eyes and willed a wormhole into being, she just couldn’t seem to make anything happen. For some reason her Death abilities were limited here in this strange new world she’d unwittingly come to inhabit. She wasn’t capable of creating even a spark of magic—and she didn’t know if it was because she’d bumped her head on the ground when she’d been unceremoniously deposited in this alternate version of Queens or if her new environment was the culprit. Either way, she was kinda screwed, as far as making a quick getaway was concerned.

“Hurry up!” Agatha called down to her.

Callie wanted to say something snarky in return, but she was too out of breath from the climb to do anything but clamber up the last few remaining stairs and heave her tired self onto the porch.

“I hate . . . this house . . . already,” Callie wheezed, as, barefoot, she leaned her forehead against the wooden railing.

“Are you okay?” Happy asked, touching Callie’s shoulder.

“Just. Out. Of. Breath.”

Callie continued to lean against the railing while somewhere in her unconscious awareness, she heard Agatha knock on the front door, heard it open, and then, to her utter relief, found the three of them being shepherded into the light of the house’s front foyer.

“Thank God,” Callie breathed, as warmth enfolded her like a blanket.

The room was small and cramped; red velvet Victorian print wallpaper covered the otherwise bare walls while a red shag runner bisected the polished dark-wood floor, splitting the space in two. There was only one other exit, a dark-wood door cut into the wall directly opposite the front entrance.

A tall woman in a camel pantsuit, her long blond hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, stood in front of this other door, a hand placed delicately on either hip. To her right sat two fawn-colored spindle chairs wedged between a drop-leaf side table with a dying potted plant on its top and an antique coatrack, but she didn’t offer anyone a seat. In fact, she didn’t look too happy to see them at all.

“You’re late . . . and you’ve brought an uninvited guest,” the woman said, her voice a growl.

Agatha, not one to be intimidated by anyone, mirrored the woman’s stance.

“We found this poor girl wandering in the woods. We couldn’t just leave her there, could we?” she replied, incredulous.

The woman backed down immediately.

“Well, I’m sure you couldn’t just leave her out there . . . Miss Averson, is it?”

Agatha nodded, pleased the woman had recognized her.

“I’m Fiona O’Flagnahan, Count Orlov’s associate. And my daughter, Heather, is a huge fan of your television show.”

This pleased Agatha even more.

“It’s so exciting to meet a fan of the show,” she purred, totally ignoring the fact that it was the woman’s daughter, and not the woman, herself, who liked her work.

Angelic features lit from within, she reached out and took the woman’s arm, squeezing it.

“Would you like an autograph? I can do that for you, no problem,” Agatha continued, turning to Happy and snapping her fingers.

“Can we get this woman an autographed photo?”

“I left my bag in the car. Count Orlov’s orders,” Happy said, shrugging helplessly.

Agatha turned back to the woman.

“Give my untouchable assistant your name and address and we’ll get publicity to pop one in the mail pronto.”

The woman smiled, impressed that Agatha possessed an “untouchable” assistant—whatever that meant, Callie thought—and gave Happy her address, spelling out her daughter’s name twice, so Agatha would be sure to write it correctly. When she was finally done, the woman turned her attention back to Callie.

“Why don’t we get your friend to the sitting room where we have the fire going?” the woman said. “That ought to warm her up a bit.”

“I just want to call a taxi,” Callie said, her lips beginning to fade from a garish eggplant to a healthier pale peach now that she was inside.

The woman crooked an eyebrow and shook her head.

“But that’s not possible. There are no electronic devices in this house. Not even a microwave or a computer.” She finished with a flourish of her hand as if she were Vanna White flipping a vowel.

Callie turned to glare at Happy.

“Hey,” she said, “don’t look at me. I’m just the assistant.”

After that pronouncement, it didn’t appear there was anything else left to say on the subject.

“This way,” Fiona intoned, as she opened the door behind her and led them out into a long hallway, which, at first glance, seemed to go on forever, but as they followed Fiona down its path, shortened so Callie could see the end.

“Wow, this place is huge,” Callie said, bare feet padding on the soft, crimson shag runner that had continued with them from the foyer into the hallway.

“It once belonged to the painter Edgar Allan Poe—” Fiona said as she led them deeper into the belly of the house.

“I think you’re mistaken. Edgar Allan Poe wasn’t a painter, he was a poet and writer,” Callie said, interrupting the flow of Fiona’s discourse, so that the older woman turned around to glare at her.

“Um, painter,” Agatha said, dropping a little vocal fry at the end of the word painter.

“I may have hit my head back there, but not hard enough to change the fact that Edgar Allan Poe was a writer.”

Callie looked to Happy, who was quickly becoming her touchstone in a world where she felt totally alien and out of place, but Happy merely shook her head.

Okay, Callie thought, so apparently Edgar Allan Poe is a painter now. Great.

It was beginning to feel like Callie had stumbled into a play that no one had given her a copy of the script to read beforehand—and since she wasn’t too keen on improv, she was having a really hard time keeping up. From now on, she was just gonna keep her mouth shut and work on figuring out a way to call up a wormhole so she could get home.

“Fine, whatever,” Callie said, dropping the subject.

Fiona took this as a cue to resume her monologue.

“As I was saying,” she continued, brushing a strand of blond, strawlike hair off her forehead, “Edgar Allan Poe and his child bride, Virginia, moved into this house in 1846, along with her mother and one servant. . . .”

As Fiona droned on, she led them still farther into the interior of the house. The hallway was clearly the mansion’s main artery from which doors, like capillaries, branched off into hidden rooms and other unseen spaces —and, though it was a two-story dwelling, there didn’t seem to be a stairway anywhere on the premises, which was definitely odd.

There’s way more to this house than meets the eye, Callie mused, but kept the thought to herself.

As they continued onward, it got darker, the flickering of the candlelight sconces that lined the walls—the only light source in the house—making it hard to see what might be lurking in the shadowy corners or even underfoot.

“This place is spooky,” Callie whispered to Happy while, ahead of them, Agatha happily chattered away at Fiona.

“I didn’t want Agatha to accept the count’s invitation,” Happy whispered back, “but she was adamant.”

“Are you sure this guy is on the up-and-up?” Callie asked, pausing midstride to slide her shoes back on. The darkness was giving her the creeps and she did not want to step on something crunchy or slimy in bare feet.

“I did some research—” Happy began, but was cut off when Fiona came to an abrupt stop in front of a locked